Information browsing software for browsing information on a network (hereinafter, written as “browser”) is provided widely for practical use. In a browser, a function to analyze information on a network (for example, a Web page which is a document described in a markup language such as an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language)) and to perform rendering based on the result of the analysis is implemented. A user can browse an intended Web page on a browser by specifying a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier).
In such a browser, various functions to improve user's usability are provided. As one of such functions, there exists a history management function to manage a history of URIs which were accessed before. A user can access a URI, which is managed by the history management function, for example, by only clicking a back button or a forward button on a browser. Namely, the history management function enables a user to access a URI which was browsed before with a simple operation without entering the URI manually or searching the URI again with a search engine.
Further, there exists a browser with an advanced GUI (Graphical User Interface) environment which can display a browser history of a URI (hereinafter, referred to as “history”) through a thumbnail. For example, Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 2002-73684A (hereinafter, written as document 1) discloses a browser which can display a history or a result of search by a search engine through a thumbnail. According to document 1, a more comfortable GUI, which visually presents a history to a user, is provided.